Friday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

{apnews.com} ~ The Latest on a caravan of Central American migrants hoping to reach the United States... Central American migrants in a mass caravan have clashed with Mexican riot police guarding a border post on the country’s southern frontier. About 50 migrants managed to push their way through. The rest retreated after officers unleashed pepper spray. Some in the caravan threw rocks. After police held off the migrants, they closed the border gates again. A federal police officer used a loudspeaker to address the masses, saying: “We need you to stop the aggression.”Migrants in a caravan traveling through Central America have broken down gates at a border crossing and are streaming toward a bridge to Mexico. After arriving at the tall, yellow metal fence Friday, some clambered atop it and on U.S.-donated military jeeps. Young men began violently tugging on the barrier and finally succeeded in tearing it down. Men, women and children then rushed through toward the bridge, about 150 yards (137 meters) away... https://apnews.com/2ed245eb397a4d209a314d2870cbafbd?utm_medium=AP&a...

.

The Experts Were Wrong About the Middle East

by Jonathan Schanzer

{theatlantic.com} ~ “I know what I’m going to do: I’m going to sanction the hell out of Saudi Arabia.”... That’s what Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said last week, to the delight of Saudi Arabia’s detractors on social media. The man who only one week prior had been jeered by millions of dummycrats-Democrats for supporting Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation was seemingly redeemed among President Donald Trump’s critics. There is a rare and growing bipartisan consensus in Congress about the need to smack Saudi Arabia with human-rights sanctions, or perhaps even tougher penalties, for its role in the death of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month but never walked out. Sanctions seem inevitable. The only problem is that many of the same experts pushing for sanctions against Saudi Arabia have previously argued, in other contexts, that sanctions don’t work. That was the near-unanimous conclusion of top policy experts who supported the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s decision to roll back sanctions on Iran, which had brought its economy to the brink of collapse, in exchange for a nuclear deal. It’s just one example of a broader trend: analysts suddenly discovering that the Middle East is more complex than they’d previously admitted. The Washington Post, which now wants Saudi Arabia to pay a price for Khashoggi’s death, ran a piece just last year by Adam Taylor titled “Do Sanctions Work? The Evidence Isn’t Compelling.” Even the Post’s Jason Rezaian, who was held hostage by the Iranians and is now safely back in the United States, opposed more sanctions on Iran in a recent piece, arguing that they would only inflict more suffering on its population... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-e...

.

Russian national charged with interfering in

US political system, 2018 elections

by Elizabeth Zwirz

{foxnews.com} ~ A Russian national has been charged with interfering in the U.S. political system... including next month’s midterm elections, the Department of Justice revealed Friday. Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, was the chief accountant of a Russian operation called "Project Lakhta," which was "funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering," a news release said. "Project Lakhta includes multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in the United States, members of the European Union, and Ukraine, among others," according to the DOJ. As part of her role in the operation, Khusyaynova allegedly oversaw its finances, "including foreign influence activities directed at the United States," the DOJ said. Among the records she allegedly managed were "detailed expenses for activities in the United States, such as expenditures for activists, advertisements on social media platforms, registration of domain names, the purchase of proxy servers, and 'promoting news postings on social networks,'" the news release said...

{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ dummtcrats-Democrats are projected to win back the House in the November midterm elections, and they are already planning a muscular agenda of setting their own policy priorities... for the first time since 2010 and investigating the Trump administration. Controlling the House doesn't mean dummtcrats-Democrats can pass any bill they want into law — a split Senate will continue to act as a hurdle and President Trump still has the power to veto bills he doesn't like. But dummtcrats-Democrats would still be able to set the agenda in the House. Here are seven things they're likely to try: 1. Investigate, investigate, investigate 2. Gun control 3. Trump's tax returns 4. Internet regulation 5. Taxes 6. Drug prices 7. Immigration and border security

{foxnews.com} ~ Former Secretary of State liar-Hillary Clinton has stepped back into the mainstream after her failed Presidential bid in 2016... which has many dummycrats-Democrats nervous for the upcoming midterm elections only a few weeks away. In a recent op-ed by Michelle Cottle, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, she writes, “liar-Hillary Clinton has been on a bit of a media tear the past few weeks, holding forth on both the personal and the political — and making clear that someone needs to perform an intervention before she further complicates life for her fellow dummycrats-Democrats.”Her column focuses on liar-Clinton’s many recent media appearances in which she constantly stirs the pot causing unnecessary drama for the dummycrats-Democratic Party. liar-Clinton was recently interviewed by CNN in which she said, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” This divisive language is exactly the reason why she lost the 2016 election, by losing the independent vote. Independent voters want solutions and results not political bickering and mob rule. The more liar-Clinton does her media appearances, it seems the more energized the GOP base becomes. Michelle Cottle explains: “The ultimate boogeyman to be invoked whenever a Republican politician is having trouble exciting his constituents, or when a Supreme Court hopeful needs to shore up his endangered nomination.”As we get closer to election day her media appearances may subside, possibly from a dummycrats-Democrat intervention, but it’s certain that Republicans will use her appearances for their political advantage...

{townhall.com} ~ Was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and then his body cut up with a bone saw and flown to Riyadh in Gulfstream jets owned by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman?

So contend the Turks, who have video from the consulate, photos of 15 Saudi agents who flew into Istanbul that day, Oct. 2, and the identity numbers of the planes.

Supporting the thesis of either a murder in the consulate or a "rendition," a kidnaping gone horribly bad, is a Post story that U.S. intel intercepted Saudi planning, ordered by the prince, to lure Khashoggi from his suburban D.C. home back to Saudi Arabia. And for what beneficent purpose?

If these charges are not refuted by Riyadh, there will likely be, and should be, as John Bolton said in another context, "hell to pay."

And the collateral diplomatic damage looks to be massive.

Any U.S.-backed "Arab NATO" to face down Iran, with Riyadh as central pillar, would appear dead. Continued U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen would now be in question.

The special relationship the crown prince and President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have established could be history.

Congress could cancel U.S. arms sales to the kingdom that keep thousands of U.S. defense workers employed, and impose sanctions on the prince who is heir apparent to the throne of his 82-year-old father, King Salman.

Today, the Saudi prince has become toxic, and his ascension to the Saudi throne seems less inevitable than two weeks ago. Yet, well before Khashoggi's disappearance in the consulate, Crown Prince Mohammed's behavior had seemed wildly erratic.

Along with the UAE, he charged Qatar with supporting terrorism, severed relations, and threatened to build a ditch to sever Qatar from the Arabian Peninsula. To protest criticism of his country's human rights record by Canada's foreign minister, he cut all ties to Ottawa.

Last year, he summoned Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Riyadh, held him for a week, and forced him to resign his office and blame it on Iranian interference in Lebanon. Released, Hariri returned home to reclaim his office.

A professed reformer, Crown Prince Mohammed opened movie theaters to women and allowed them to drive, and then jailed the social activists who had called for these reforms.

Three years ago, he initiated the war on the Houthis, after the rebels ousted a pro-Saudi president and took over most of the country.

And, since 2015, the crown prince has conducted a savage air war that has brought Houthi missiles down on his own country and capital.

Yemen has become Saudi Arabia's Vietnam.

That our principal Arab ally in our confrontation with Iran, which could lead to yet another U.S. war, is a regime headed by so unstable a character should raise serious concerns about where it is we are going in the Middle East.

Have we not wars already?

Do we not have enough enemies in the region -- Taliban, al-Qaida, ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Iran -- to be starting another war?

As for our regional allies, consider.

NATO ally Turkey, which is pressing the case against our Saudi allies, leads the world in the number of journalists jailed. Our Egyptian ally, Gen. al-Sissi, came to power in a military coup, and has imprisoned thousands of dissidents of the Muslim Brotherhood.

While we have proclaimed Iran the "world's greatest state sponsor of terror," it is Yemen, where Saudi Arabia intervened in 2015, that is regarded as the world's great human rights catastrophe.

Moreover, Iran is itself suffering from terrorism.

Last month, a military parade in the city of Ahvaz in the southwest was attacked by gunmen who massacred 25 soldiers and civilians in the deadliest terror attack in Iran in a decade.

And like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, Iran suffers, too, from tribalism, with Arab secessionists in its southwest, Baloch secessionists in its southeast, and Kurd secessionists in its northwest.

The U.S. cannot look aside at a royal Saudi hand in the murder of a U.S.-based journalist in its consulate in Istanbul. But before we separate ourselves from the Riyadh regime, we should ask what is the alternative if the House of Saud should be destabilized or fall?

When Egypt's King Farouk was overthrown in 1952, we got Nasser.

When young King Faisal was overthrown in Baghdad in 1958, we eventually got Saddam Hussein. When King Idris in Libya was ousted in 1969, we got Qaddafi. When Haile Selassie was overthrown and murdered in Ethiopia in 1974, we got Col. Mengistu and mass murder. When the Shah was overthrown in Iran in 1979, we got the Ayatollah.

As World War I, when four empires fell, testifies, wars are hell on monarchies. And if a new and larger Middle East war, with Iran, should break out in the Gulf, some of the Arab kings, emirs and sultans will likely fall.

And when they do, history shows, it is not usually dummycrats-democrats who rise to replace them.

LIGHTER SIDE

ALERT ALERT

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must be taking night classes at the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez School of Government.

Pelosi, the 79-year-old third-highest ranking official in the U.S. government, was speaking to the Center for American Progress today when she mistakenly said there are “two co-equal branches” of government, before correcting herself to say there are three.

Watch:

“First of all, let me just say, we take an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Pelosi said.

“Democrats take that oath seriously, and we are committed to honoring our oath of office. I’m not sure that our Republican colleagues share that commitment, and I’m not sure that the president of the United States does, too,” she claimed.

“So, in light of the fact that the beauty of the Constitution is a system of checks and balances— two co-equal branches— three co-equal branches of government,” she corrected with a laugh.

“A check and balance on each other,” she continued. “Con— Constitution spells out the pri— pa, uh, the duties of Congress and one of them is oversight of the president of the United States, another one of them is to impeach the president of the United States,” Pelosi said.

In November, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied supporters on Facebook to pitch in and help Democrats take back “all three chambers of Congress.”

“…the Progressive movement works and it wins in all districts…If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress– three chambers of government…,” she said during the virtual appearance.

She clarified that she meant the “presidency, the Senate and the House.”

According to the Constitution, the three branches of government are the legislative, executive and judicial.

Below: Nancy Pelosi is continuing to promote the false narrative that President Trump is involved in a cover-up and therefore may be guilty of an impeachable offense. Millie Weaver joins Alex to break down the propaganda being used to overturn the democratic election of 2016